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(OPINION) When it comes to religion news, what ultimately mattered in 2023?

Colleagues in the Religion News Association divided their annual choices of the year's top stories into two categories. Incidents of hatred against Jews and Muslims ranked number one in U.S. matters, while the related Israel-Hamas war led international items. Thirdly, Pope Francis was deemed the year’s top newsmaker in religion for the fourth time.

It’s hard to argue against the two top stories, but The Guy observes that we have no idea whether U.S. hatreds are a temporary sickness that will subside, or whether anything can really alter the essential questions in the decades-long Middle East conflict. Thus, The Guy leans toward the importance of permanent changes in direction as depicted below.

The results of the RNA members’ poll were released just before Monday’s revolutionary “declaration” from the Vatican’s doctrine agency, following frequent nudges from Pope Francis, that lets priests provide blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples and for Catholics in “irregular” situations, presumably meaning those divorced and remarried.

The Church of England’s parallel approval for same-sex blessings, implemented the day before the new Vatican edict, gravely worsened this year’s split over marriage and sexuality among Anglicans worldwide, a divide that has been widening for decades.

Several important stories are ongoing, and we cannot yet judge their long-term import.

One leading domestic story is religious influences in the raucous 2024 election campaign, which have already consumed ample printer’s ink. But we need actual votes to discern what’s new and what’s news.

The Nov. 30 Memo updated The Guy’s perennial theme here at GetReligion that White evangelicals may predictably boost Donald Trump in the Republican primaries despite those criminal charges, but in November, White Catholics are the voters to watch (unless there are big surprises from Hispanic Catholics, Hispanic Protestants, Black Protestants or Jews).

Internationally, a potentially huge story waiting to be assessed in 2024 is Pope Francis’s Synod of Bishops on “synodality,” meaning changes to enhance lay parishioners’ involvement in church life. Talks at the first synod session in 2023 merely set up the second session, which makes final decisions next October. The results will probably define the legacy of Francis, who turned 87 on Sunday.

Also pending is the potential top newsmaker. Instead of the RNA choice of Francis, The Guy would have considered Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was not even among nominees on the RNA ballot. In her Nov. 11 Unherd.com column, this prominent atheist — see books “Infidel” (2008) and “Heretic” (2016) — and ex-Muslim human rights crusader explained “Why I Am Now a Christian.”

Here again, we don’t really know what this means religiously and where it might lead. Which enterprising journalist with religious savvy will get the interview that fully explores such things?

Another omission. The RNA ballot that listed numerous story concepts, including such situations of persecution as Armenian Christians expelled from their enclave within Azerbaijan, abuse of Muslims by Communist China and by Myanmar, and Ukraine’s crackdown on the nation’s ancient Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has attempted to cut its ties to Moscow. The Guy regrets that RNA ignored the unending atrocities that make Nigeria the most dangerous place on earth to be a Christian. Will major newsrooms ever cover this tragic story?

Enough with the throat-clearing.

If the 2023 Story of the Year is defined in terms of unambiguous, substantial and seemingly fixed change, then The Guy proclaims a first place tie between disruptions in America’s two largest Protestant denominations, the Southern Baptist Convention and United Methodist Church, as depicted in this prior Memo.

The RNA put in 10th place the SBC’s expulsion of five congregations for having women as pastors. But there was more. The SBC meeting passed a constitutional amendment (pending second approval next June) that affiliated congregations must allow “only men as any kind of pastor or elder.” That crushed those who thought female clergy who are not head pastors of congregations could be allowed. The Baptist heritage granted congregations considerable leeway, but now a total ban on women is demanded as essential doctrine, rejecting other evangelicals’ “egalitarian” conviction.

The UMC in 2023 concluded the largest American schism since the Civil War, over sexuality and numerous matters of biblical authority. By official count, at this writing 7,659 congregations have departed, roughly a fourth of this once huge denomination.

U.S. establishment bureaucrats prevented some who tried to leave while other congregations fell just short of the needed two-thirds vote, which guarantees ongoing rancor. Many dropouts are joining the new Global Methodist Church, whose name signals not-yet-fully-realized merger hopes with conservatives in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Much may depend on whether enhanced liberal policies win at the upcoming UMC conference April 23–May 3.

This piece first appeared at GetReligion.org.

Richard Ostling is a former religion reporter for The Associated Press and a former correspondent for TIME Magazine. He’s also worked in broadcast TV and radio journalism covering religion and received a lifetime achievement award from Religion News Association.